When the heads of the world's major news agencies sat down a year ago with Vladimir Putin at a St. Petersburg palace, they were treated to a long, sumptuous meal of Crimean flounder, a dish evidently chosen not only for its delicacy but for the political statement.

What if all this show of Putin's disappearance was anything but botched? What if this mess was exactly what he wanted it to be, a useful distraction from a series of other issues he would rather we not pay as much attention to, like the mysterious murder of his primary opposition critic just outside the Kremlin walls? In other words, careful what you wish for people. In the final analysis, we may still be witnessing the end of Vladimir Putin. Alternatively, it may simply be Putin's wag the dog communications strategy.

Six years beyond the onset of global crisis and the lamentation seems louder: pundits are increasingly perplexed by the planet's prolonged period of perpetual perturbations. So, does anything stand out in 2014 as an "out of the blue" development?

While it might sound bizarre to say so, the crises, both in Iraq and Ukraine, are playing to the strengths of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Within all of the uncertainty, Canadians have been largely satisfied with Prime Minister Harper's response.

The Department of National Defence is currently being hounded by Treasury Board, which had designed a system that makes it impossible for DND to manage its budget. As a result, the military keeps falling behind in equipment purchases and capacity keeps declining. The government could put an end to this stalemate if it wished to, but instead seems delighted that it is pocketing the unspent money to meet its deficit-fighting promises. Canadians already have a small military and it just keeps shrinking.